even if not exaggerated, was not inconsistent with a date of two thousand years back; while the variety of languages, traceable, as they no doubt might have been, into a few groups, as in the other continents, might have been fully explained by other causes into which we have hereafter to enter. Horn, and other writers on the origin of the American Indians, have been less opposed to the view of Acosta, which we should remember is the more worthy of admission, as he had passed so many years in the New World, and that so soon after the Spanish conquests as to give him decided advantages over the others. That his opinions were well founded we may feel warranted in asserting, from every later consideration beyond the learned Jesuit's individual impressions. Since his time, many writers, and especially those who were natives of America, have looked on the remains of former inhabitants of that continent, found there, as if they were of incalculable antiquity, and the works of what they are pleased to call "mysterious races." Later researches have dispelled much of this illusion. Of the two semi-civilized empires of Mexico and Peru it was too evident, from their own traditions, given with a particularity which almost amounted to history, that they had no pretensions to an antiquity of more than a few centuries preceding the conquest. But there were other remains to which the authors to whom I refer love to assign an immeasurable antiquity; 1st. The mound-like works on the eastern coasts of North America; 2dly , The larger mounds of the west, or the valley of the Mississippi; and, 3dly, The ruined cities of stone found in Yucatan and Central America. With regard to the first, Mr. Squier,[1] in his late excellent work on the "Antiquities of the State of New York" (Buffalo 1851), expressly says, "None of the ancient works of this State, of which traces remain displaying any considerable degree of regularity, can lay claim to high antiquity. All of them may be referred with certainty to the period succeeding the commencement of European intercourse" (p. 9.). This fact he proves from the later investigations having uniformly found in them articles of European manufacture, which, being seldomer, or very rarely, found in the mounds of the west, he seems to consider a proof of their greater antiquity. But as the works only vary in size, and not in character, the conclusion seems more reasonable, that the difference might be ascribed only to the circumstance of the one locality being
- ↑ Whose authority I feel great pleasure, from personal knowledge of the Author, in acknowledging as deserving of our entire acceptance.
